How to Recognize Employee Burnout

As a manager, you’re responsible for maximizing your team’s performance and efficiency. That means you must be able to identify hurdles to productivity—and help your team members overcome them. 

One of the greatest hurdles to productivity is employee burnout, which the World Health Organization (WHO) defines as “a syndrome…resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” 

By helping your team members manage stress more effectively, you can mitigate and prevent employee burnout, leading to higher job satisfaction, better performance, increased engagement, and decreased turnover. 

Whether you’re a new manager or an experienced leader, these tips and strategies will empower you to recognize and combat burnout so that you can deliver a better employee experience—and, at the same time, achieve better business outcomes. 

Why is burnout so detrimental to organizations?

Stress, exhaustion, and burnout are sometimes accepted as normal parts of work. However, dismissing or ignoring employee burnout is a risky strategy that comes at a high cost for businesses. 

Employee burnout is harmful to organizations because it corresponds with low rates of engagement and high rates of turnover—both of which are disruptive to growth, learning, morale, and productivity. 

Whether employees feel overwhelmed by their tasks or roles, or feel disconnected from their leaders and colleagues, they are less likely to perform efficiently, less likely to seek out additional projects or challenges, and ultimately, more likely to quit. Not only does that directly translate to higher recruitment costs, but also the loss of valuable knowledge and talent from your organization, which can have indirect costs of its own.  

Burnout is also linked to increased absenteeism, which, as Corporate Wellness Magazine points out, “can lead to project delays, missed deadlines, and reduced quality of work.” 

Yet another issue is that burnout harms morale and negatively impacts your workplace culture. That leads to lowered productivity and increases the difficulty of attracting talent to your organization in the future. 

So, just how widespread of a problem is employee burnout? Unfortunately, it’s more prevalent than many employers think. Let’s review some statistics to see where the situation stands as of 2023. 

What statistics reveal about the current state of workplace burnout

Employee burnout has always posed a challenge for businesses—but, like all other aspects of work, it’s also been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. So, what do the data and trends around burnout say in the post-pandemic age? 

Here are a few statistics for business leaders to consider: 

• Over 50 percent of managers feel burned out, according to the Harvard Business Review 
• Nearly nine in 10 employees (89 percent) experienced burnout over a 12-month period from 2022 to 2023
• 21 percent of employees report a lack of programs to help them deal with burnout 
• The overall rate of burnout was around 59 percent in the U.S. as of 2022, a sharp 12.5 percent increase from 2021 

If these statistics have you concerned that burnout might be impacting your people, keep reading to learn how to recognize the signs of employee burnout—and, even more critically, what actions you can take to support and realign your team members when burnout strikes.  

What is the best way to recognize burnout in employees?

According to the WHO, “[Employee burnout] is characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy.” 

To prevent burnout from going undetected or unrecognized at your organization, it’s important to ensure that all of your team leaders are familiar with its signs. A learning management platform, like WorkRamp’s Learning Cloud, can help you create and deliver courses that teach your leaders how to recognize burnout—and what steps to take when they identify it. An LMS platform can also combat burnout by providing employees with content that levels up their skills, increases their internal mobility, and teaches self-care strategies.

Employee burnout signs

As the World Health Organization points out, burnout is characterized by exhaustion, feelings of negativity, diminished engagement, and reduced overall efficacy at work. So what are some forms that might take in an employee? 

It’s impossible to effectively prevent or address employee burnout unless you’re able to recognize its warning signs. Here are nine signals that an employee might be suffering from burnout, excessive stress, or mental exhaustion: 

• Decreased motivation and enthusiasm 
• Difficulty concentrating 
• Fatigue or lack of energy 
• Feeling cynical, pessimistic, or detached from the mission
• Feelings of hopelessness or depression
• Increased irritability 
• Insomnia or sleep disturbances 
• Loss of confidence in the ability to complete tasks or perform a role 
• Loss of pleasure in work 

As you can see from the above list, the signs of employee burnout can vary. They can also express themselves differently from one individual to another. Performance reviews, informal coffee chats, lunch dates, and one-on-one meetings are all great opportunities to check in, observe your team members, and communicate transparently. 

What can you do to help burnt-out employees? 

The numbers don’t lie: employee burnout is detrimental to the growth and success of your organization—and it’s on the rise across the workforce. 

Fortunately, there are actions you can take to help prevent burnout and support employees who are feeling overwhelmed. Here are eight simple strategies to reduce employee burnout and help team members who are struggling: 

1. Be flexible about work schedules, like providing more options for hybrid or remote work
2. Create opportunities for employees to socialize and build friendships 
3. Encourage employees to use their personal and vacation days 
4. Ensure that all managers and supervisors on your team complete leadership development and training that covers how to address burnout effectively 
5. Hold one-on-one meetings so that you can regularly check-in 
6. Offer programs like corporate yoga or mindfulness meditation that can help employees develop positive stress management strategies 
7. Promote a workplace culture that values a healthy work-life balance and puts a priority on mental health 
8. Use an online LMS like the Learning Cloud to provide employees with mobile-friendly self-help resources

An LMS can also help you track employees’ workloads, projects, clients, and schedules while monitoring performance so that you can gain meaningful real-time insights and tackle burnout before it snowballs. 

Explore more strategies for supporting employee wellbeing, or learn how (and why) to establish employee wellness programs. 

How a learning management system can help you tackle workplace burnout 

The more supported and less overwhelmed your employees feel at work, the more likely they are to engage with tasks—and the less likely they are to leave your organization. By making employee wellness a pillar of your workplace culture, you can increase loyalty and retention while you decrease your hiring costs. Combating burnout also enables you to reduce absenteeism, avoid the resulting delays, and increase overall productivity levels. 

Learn how an LMS can help you bring wellness to the forefront of your workplace culture. Contact WorkRamp today to schedule a demo of the Learning Cloud or our other cloud-based training solutions.